Going Home!

I was trying to schedule a flight for a co-worker to attend a business trip and decided to check the prices for Minneapolis, and found a great deal on a flight. So… I called my mom to find out what was happening (nothing) talked to my boss to see if I could go, (why not) then called Chris to see if he was going to object, (nope) and lastly my son Brandon to see if he wanted to come along. (Why Not) YEAH!!!!!!!! Nothing like making a decision at the last minute…… we leave on Saturday.

So yesterday I was looking around at what I have made, to see if I should take anything with me. I knew that I had to take my sisters curtains that I made for her sauna room. She picked out the fabric last year. That would be No problem. I had them made already , they just needed to be mailed.

Next I was looking at this embroidery that I did on my sewing machine last summer. I wanted to make a pillow for my niece Dakota. I originally brought this with me last August to finish while I was home and never got around to it. I left the pillow insert with my mom and told her that I would mail it to her when I got it done. (That never Happened) But I got it done last night.

I hope that the pinks match her room! …………. take care………

Safe & Sound

Well we made it back from our trip to Laughlin safely. We saw a lot of wonderful looking bikes. This was a Greatful Dead bike. It was pretty cool lots of detail. The weather was pretty decent except for the wind. We had a nice visit with the family also.

When we got home Chris’ Birthday present arrived! He was really excited when I told him what I had bought him but seeing them was even better. They are going to perch on our fence posts. He is already making plans to have them with glowing red eyes and smoke coming out of their mouths. This would only take place when someone came up to the fence. They are pretty cool and he is really happy.

So I’ve been waiting for this to happen and it finally did. My car turned over this morning to lucky for me it happened just when I came up to a red light. So I took a pitcher of it. I wonder how many miles I will get on this car. Hopefully she is good for another 100000. This is the first car that I have owned that the mileage started at 0. …………..Take Care…..

TGIF!!!!!!!!!

I’m off for a fun filled weekend!!! It’s the Laughlin River Run - It’s the West Coast Largest Motorcycle Event On the Banks of the Colorado River. In Laughlin Nevada. It’s been fun watching all the motorcycles heading that way. I don’t think that we have gone for the last five years. It’s quite an experience.

Well here’s what I’ve done so far this week, and it hasn’t been to much………….

I had to make a quick baby blanket. I started this one on Sunday and finished it on Monday evening. Being in such a hurry I’ve sewn the backing fabric on the wrong side. But in the end I really liked the look and decided to go with it. Whew………..Since it had to be quick I went ahead and tied it together. They loved it.

Everyone was happy, including me.

Well I had a surprise last Friday morning and here is one of them I have a wildcat (not just a …but three, if you look at one of my previous post you’ll see “Pretty Boy” he’s the black cat) outside that I feed. She brought me her four kittens to start feeding. They are so cute. Now I have to desperately try to find homes for them. I’m not sure how they manage to live in the wild desert like they do and not have a coyote or a hawk get them. The mama cat to these kittens, I can’t even get close to. Right now I’m working on the kittens to get them people friendly. There’s a lot of hissing going on.

I’m planning to get the black cats spayed and neutered so hopefully I won’t keep getting these litters. This is the third time around.

I took a of photo of this prickly pear cactus in bloom.

I’ll post a few more pictures of the different cactus’ that I have in my yard later….Take Care and have a GREAT WEEKEND!!…

Oh My Gosh!!!!!!!!!!

This is really something that I did not need to stumble upon. A month or so ago my son brought me a couple of books that a friend of his was taking over to Bookman’s. Bookman’s is a used book store here in Tucson. Anyways he had a couple of craft books one was a cross-stitch sampler and the other was a book on crewel. I thanked him and look the books over no big deal. Well…… What I didn’t know was that he had a whole box of some more ………. He had a box over at his house sitting outside. I didn’t really pay any attention to it. So a few weeks go by and the box is still sitting there. I kept thinking what is in it. We have had lots of wind, some rain and the box never moves. Well he had a few friends over on Saturday night and one of them stumbled on the box and knocked it over. On Sunday I went to get the newspaper and my curiosity got the best of me and I had to find out what was in that box……….. LOOK WHAT I FOUND INSIDE I have a whole collection of Doll World Magazines and then some. The subscription started in 1978. I have 32 magazines from the 1980’s some from 1990’s and a few from 2000. It was really interesting to browse through them and see how they have changed over the years…………They all have a paper doll section in them that the magazine made into contest until around the 80’s somewhere and then it looks like a artist named Frey made them regularly. I haven’t REALLY looked at all of them. But I browsed through them pretty good. I came across some patterns that the lady who owned them started to create.……..So I guess I’ll most likely make the

“Just Like Mommy” doll. There were a couple of other magazines in there also like this one published from Woman’s Day in 1968. Aren’t the dolls cute!

There also was this magazine in there from 1968 called Women’s household. It had this advertisement in it for this diet You can ‘t see the descriptions very well but I really had a good laugh at the titles. Not to sure that you would see things like this in todays’ magazine….

Here’s one last photo that I’ll show of some of the other random magazines that were in there

…….oh oh and just one more that I got a good laugh at………. ……..look at these hippies. This one is from April of 1979…………….take care………….

Where did last week go!

I was busy, busy, busy, last week. It was employee recognition week at work and I’m on the committee. We had the kick off on Monday, Service Award Banquet on Tuesday evening, Ice cream social on Wednesday afternoon, the boss took us out for lunch on Thursday, and the grand finally was a breakfast on Friday. I was completely exhausted by Friday afternoon. Oh and did I forget to tell you that this was for 250 employees more or less. Whew …. So needless to say on Saturday I did a whole bunch of nothing ………………….

I started to make these aprons (see previous post for the other one) a week or so ago and I haven’t been able to finish. I started to make the characters but I only got as far as one. This is going to be a girl. She’s not looking to girly though. Hopefully by the time the week goes on I’ll have her looking much better.

I’ve also made some progress on my next baby blanket that I’ve been making. I had previously posted about it. I’m trying to remember but I think that it took 1 1/2 hours to get it all iron down. I’m hoping to start appliquéing it this week. I’m going to use a blanket stitch on my sewing machine to adhere it. I haven’t decided if I’m going to use black thread or go with different colored thread to match the cars.

This is a Sindy Rodenmayer design from Fat Cat Patterns.

I’ve did get a  bit of stitching in this week.    Since I started car pooling after work I have any where from 45 min. to an one hour before Chris gets off. So I usually sit and stitch here was my latest project that I finished. Ican’t remember where on the internet/whose site that I got this angel from, (sorry for the poor photo… bad lighting) but she sure is cute. I’m going to make a wall hanging with her. I haven’t decided if I want to tea dye the fabric or not.

I also finished this months Noah’s Ark Block from Lynnette.

It’s a pretty small block 2″ and only took about a hour to stitch I think, it might have been less. Here is a close up of the block.

…… take care….

Thrift Store Finds & A Couple of Aprons

Yesterday after work I stopped by the Speedway Outlet.  Look at what I found!

 

I saw this cat fabric in a bag with these other fabrics. 

and thought ….I could use these in a couple of projects ……. I have no idea who this cat is ……. but it looked like fun childrens print.  I could see these other two fabrics but, what I couldn’t see, …..  and didn’t even know that they were also folded up inside the bag was this little bundle of goodness!

 

That was pretty exciting!… I love roosters! … I have quite  a collection of them.  The grand total of fabric that was in the bag was 9 yards.   I think I really made out for $2.98! …..  Then there was this apron that caught my eye for $1.98  

I think it was handmade.  I took an up close picture of the applique  not sure that you can see the tiny blanket stitches but they are there. I can just imagine how long it took to applique the motifs on this apron.  It’s  really pretty.  

Lastly here is a sneak peak of a project that I’m working on.  I made the first part of the project this morning.  Can you quess what it is?  Do you know what else goes with it?     

Noah’s Ark

Wow - I can’t believe that I haven’t posted a picture of my finished Noah’s Ark Block that Lynnette Anderson designed. This block is called The rabbits. The block is still available as of today. She will post a new block each month for the next year. Lynnette doesn’t say when she will post it each month. I guess she likes to keep you guessing. You’ll have to check her blog regularly if you want to follow along. It will be a wall hanging when it is completed.

I wanted to take a picture of the block and the directions but since my little Tubby has to be in all my projects, and this one was no exception, here she is.

Have a great Day!!!

Weekend Projects - Baby Blankets!!

Here is the baby blanket that I was going to tie. I tried the machine satin stitch that I saw in the Patchwork and Quilted Gifts book. I really like the way that it turned out. It was super easy and really fast. It helped that I already had it sewn together. I am going to use this method again. Unlike the next baby blanket that I’m going to show you. 

So far I have kept track of the time spent/gas used for shopping for the fabric, dollar amount spent, and time on the preparation of it.  I think I may be surprised at the out come of it all. I’ll share more as I progress. Here are a couple of pictures. The first picture is the pattern ironed on to the reverse side of the fabric, the next one is all the pieces cut out and ready for the next step.  All of this process has taken about 5 hours.  

In between baby blankets I was working on my Baltimore Blues Block. I decided to use spray startch on this block. I haven’t started to stitch any of this on fabric yet. I hope that I will be able to make my circles round when I start stitching them down.  As you can tell from the picture I still have quite a few more circles to do.  But I think I have found a new way of trying it.  Hopefully it will work better. . . . Don’t you just love new techniques?

My New Books Have Arrived!

Amazon delivered my new books!  I was so excited!  I received them on Tuesday.   I haven’t had much of a chance this week to really get a good look at them.  Until today.  They sure are great books! - my mind is already clicking of the possibilities -  ……    

Pretty Boy came over to inspect and visit.  …… I think he approves.   I have a couple of quick baby blankets that I sewed together and was going tie them with yarn.  After getting to really look inside Patchwork and Quilted Gifts I found a super quick & easy baby quilt in there that they used their sewing machine to quilt the layers together with an embroidery stitch.  I am going to give it a try.  I really like the way that it looked.  I’ll post a picture of it after it’s completed

I bought the quilt top that Pretty Boy is laying on at the thrift store for $1.98 last Friday.  I’m going to use it to pratice free motion quilting.   

I also bought this fabric last Friday to make a baby blanket.  I started  working on this project on Monday and hope I can get it completed in the next couple of weeks.   I also started a couple of little wall hanging that I stitched up on Sunday.  I still have to finished them off  - hopefully before the weekend is over.   I have a little series of these that I’m going to put together.  The pattern is from Patch Abilities.  I’ll post the final results when they are finished.

And lastly since I posted a picture of my wild kitty Pretty Boy I decided that Dexter deserved a spot on this post also.  He looks like he is in jail.  Sometimes that’s not a bad idea for Dex.  I’ve had Dex for three years now.  I bought him when Pet-Smart was having adoption day. I brought my other dog She-Ra in to be groomed and there he was.  I fell in love with him right away.  I just had to have him.  He was saved by an organization named F.A.I.R.  They rescue animals from the dog pound that don’t get adopted.  

Well– I’m off to see about selecting a stitch to use on the baby blankets! 

   

Happy Easter Everyone!

I hope everyone is doing something great for Easter! We’re just hanging out and enjoying the weekend.  I have a nice ham dinner planned for us.  Since we don’t have any of the grandkids here, there will be no easter egg hunt.    But as usual, I will hide Mr. B’s easter basket and he’ll have to search for it.  Family tradition!  Yeah, he is 22 years old but he still enjoys it.  He wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

Well here are a couple of things that I got done in the past week I finished block # 3 from Capricorn Quilts.  I also got a few more bibs made. Here are a couple of pictures of them.

I have a few more to get done and will do so this weekend.  I already have them cut I’m just deciding how I want to finish them.  The bias binding tape is really giving me a hard time.  I put a few of them together and threw them in the wash to see what would happen and the results were not good.  So I had to un-sew them in a few places and re-attach the binding.   I thought that I might have a problem and boy was I right.  I would have hated to sell them to my friend, and they fall apart after one wash.  That would not have been very good at all.    Well that’s all for now will post later with some more pictures.  Have fun everyone!!